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New Orleans: The road to becoming a 21st century government (part 1)

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In 2010, IBM Citizenship created the Smarter Cities Challengeto help 100 cities over a three-year period.IBM sends 6 of our best and brightest individuals to a given city tohelp them address some of the critical challenges facing their city.In 2011 alone, IBM went to 26 cities across theworld and so far, the cityleaders have been more than-pleased with IBM’s sense of global citizenship.

In September of 2011, 6 IBM subject matter experts, thoughtleaders, executives and IBM master inventors contributed their time andexpertise to the City of New Orleans.The following blog is Part 1 of a 2 partblog on the experience and solutions developed for the City of New Orleans.The blog is authored by IBM Rational’s ownJim Amsden - Software Architect, Government IndustrySolutions.

Envisioning a 21st Century Government in New Orleans

New Orleans is a fantastic city that has had its share of challenges over the last fewyears. We spent the first week doing discovery: interviewing and meeting MayorMitchell Landrieu, many members of his staff, community leaders, the US ArmyCorps of Engineers, representatives from Tulane University,and the local IBM team. We collected a virtual library of documents and heldworkshops to explore key issues in greater depth. Over the course of the threeweek period we met with over 60 people representing a wide cross-section ofperspectives and interests who provided us with a view of the beauty andpotential of the City of New Orleans,as well as the challenges the city faces in realizing that potential. We metsome truly fantastic people with incredible capabilities and insight, many ofwhom left lasting impressions on us all.

We spent the second week establishing the scope of theproblem, attempting to address not only the issues raised in the New OrleansSSC application, but also those re-enforced through the discovery process. Ourscope was to address planning and performance management issues to help thecity determine what services they should provide, at what service levels, andhow should they provide them efficiently, effectively, and within availableresources in order to maximize outcomes delivered to its citizens. In order todo that, we also had to address the creation of an effective Information SupplyChain to provide the information needed to do the planning and performanceassessment, and to drive appropriate actions for closing gaps between needs andcapabilities.

We then analyzed our findings from the discovery process andformed a set of hypothesis that organized and guided our vision,recommendations and roadmap for enabling New Orleans to become a 21stcentury City. Our findings centered around four areas or themes. The first was Mayor Landrieu’s vision for 21st Century Government:establishing a culture of performance through objective metrics and actionsthat drive how government organizations work in order to do more with less. TheMayor wants to be able to see, hear and know how the city is performing againstpriorities in order to create appropriate actions for closing any requiredperformance gaps. The second theme was ActiveCommunity Partnering. No city has the resources required to address allproblems. Partnering with the community establishes a collaborative environmentin which citizen priorities and needs can be accurately assessed and the hardchoices that have to be made can be shared between the service consumers andproviders. Open government is needed to provide citizens the information they needin order to contribute to their government and to achieve common good. Thethird theme was Outcome Based Culture,which recognizes that the role of government is to deliver outcomes thataddress citizen needs, at a price they are willing to pay. The City’s planning process, Budgeting forOutcomes, was designed to support delivering the most high-priorityoutcomes possible with available revenue. Key performance indicators areestablished to ensure operations deliver the planned outcomes, helping realizecitizen needs and city goals. The final theme was Data Informed Decision Making, which includes ensuring decisions,actions and operations were driven and informed by complete, accurate, timelyand secure data to the stakeholders that need it, and in a form that they canconsume.

In summary, our vision for helping New Orleans become a 21stCentury Government, to enable the Mayor to see, to hear, and to know what ishappening and how to act involves addressing three areas: Planning andPerformance Management, Community Partnering and Information Supply Chain. Aspecial thanks goes to Okumura-san for capturing this vision.

Getting the most and not using much: Planning & Performance Management

New Orleans,like cities around the world, is involved in a large number of integrated,interconnected businesses that deliver services vital to its citizens. Managingthese programs, services, processes and resources effectively is a challenge inits own right. But today’s cities are also in a constant state of fiscalcrisis. Every year revenues trend downward as the result of the economicrecessions, austerity measures, anti-tax initiatives, competition due toglobalization and population shifts. At the same time, material and labor costscontinue upward for core activities (education, medication and incarceration),new mandates, increased citizen needs, and aging infrastructure maintenance.

This is requiring most cities to find ways to do more withless, to optimize both what services they provide, and how they are delivered. New Orleans is addressingthese challenges by utilizing a process called Budgeting for Outcomes (BFO) todetermine the services and services levels that maximize outcomes addressingthe highest priority citizen needs with available revenue. They also used aperformance management process for assessing how well those services areprovided and to identify actions for closing performance gaps.

We found that the BFO process was sound, but New Orleans experiencedsome challenges in achieving its expected benefit. BFO is driven by availablerevenue, prioritized goals, and provided city services. Uncertainty or latechanges in revenue estimates can have a significant impact on program planningand management. Manual execution of the BFO process makes it difficult toassess different service offers or iterate the process when priorities changeor new information is discovered. Prioritization needs to include the input ofa broad range of stakeholders, including the voice of the citizen to identifyand prioritize their needs.

Poor linkage between goals, service offers, outcomes,business plans, operations and performance indicators can make it harder toreason about different planning choices. Performance indicators may not besufficiently linked with programs, services, processes and resources in orderto ensure the right performance indicators are being assessed, and they havethe right target values consistent with the service levels needed to deliverthe required outcomes. This can limit the impact of performance assessments onoperations.

Our recommendation was to utilize available tools to supportthe BFO process (click on the image to the right to see a larger version).

Utilize benchmarks to rank against other similar or aspirational cities to leverage their innovation and successes

Create a Business Motivation Model to capture business strategy and policy information, and to enable the connection of motivational elements with the service catalog

Create a municipal model to provide a common language for describing and relating the large number of provided services, and to provide a service catalog that forms the basis for budget offers that can be connected to goals, outcomes and citizen needs

Utilize portfolio management tools to prioritize citizen needs as well as provider goals that along with costs, risks, time to value and performance indicators can be used to objectively assess service offers to establish defensible, quantified rankings, and to enable what-if scenarios for exploring alternative rankings

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In the area of performance management, we recommend that thecity provide a balanced approach to performance assessment that addresses thewhole lifecycle of planning, solution development, operations, assessment, andmanagement and governance.

Tools can be used to develop “State of the City” scorecardssupporting a mayoral dashboard and reports that provide the information neededto evaluate the impact of and close performance gaps. This not only helpsautomate the production of performance reports, but also enables theireffective communication across all stakeholders to ensure appropriatecommitment to timely actions that address multi-agency, cross-sector issues. Italso provides a means to inform citizens so they can participate in theirgovernment, understanding what the government is doing and why, and providefeedback where needed.

These recommendations are predicated on the availability ofaccurate and timely information, which motivated the recommendation for anInformation Supply Chain.